The recent fatal accident involving an Uber self-driving car that hit a pedestrian in Tempe is not expected to affect the operations of TuSimple, a Chinese company that is developing self-driving commercial trucks in 蜜柚直播.
Gov. Doug Ducey this week suspended Uber鈥檚 蜜柚直播 self-driving car test program pending an investigation of the March 18 fatality, in which an Uber test car plowed into a woman walking her bike while a human monitor in the car was distracted.
Chuck Price, partner and vice president of product at TuSimple, said company officials met with the governor鈥檚 staff two days after the Uber incident and they remain 鈥渧ery supportive鈥 of the company鈥檚 efforts.
TuSimple is testing autonomous trucks out of a new facility on 蜜柚直播鈥檚 southeast side and plans to send a commercial load using the self-driving technology from 蜜柚直播 to Phoenix in the next few months.
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鈥淲e do not think this will affect our schedule,鈥 Price said in an email. 鈥淲e consider safety to be our highest priority.鈥
Price said TuSimple鈥檚 systems use a completely different architecture than Uber, 鈥渇rom sensors to software.鈥
鈥淲hile we will await the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) report before drawing an official conclusion, our own analysis of released information leads us to be very concerned about Uber鈥檚 system performance and human performance,鈥 he said.
Price noted that all of its test drivers are professionally trained Class A commercial driver鈥檚 license holders, with additional in-house training by TuSimple.
Each vehicle is manned by one of these drivers plus an engineer, who monitors the system as well as the driver, Price said.
Contact senior reporter David Wichner at dwichner@tucson.com or 573-4181. On Twitter: @dwichner. On Facebook:
David Wichner
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